In just over 20 days, Lafayette County voters will cast their ballots in the Democratic primary to decide which candidate will take on President Trump in November.
Just two states – Iowa and New Hampshire – have held their primary elections. Two more states will hold primaries before “Super Tuesday” on March 3, when 14 states vote on the same day. Mississippians head to the polls along with five other states a week later on March 10. This past Saturday, Lafayette County Democrats met at all 18 county precincts to caucus, or discuss their votes.
Only four states, not including Mississippi, still use an official caucus to choose the Democratic nominee. Many have switched in recent years to a government-run primary system, in which the local elections commission administers the election, like every other state race. This helps prevent the criticisms of the caucus system, which has voting locations different from the normal precincts and often are not open all day like in a general election.
“The precinct caucuses here are really just an organizing tool,” Cristen Hemmins, Chair of the Lafayette County Democratic Party, said. It’s a way of trying to get input from folks at the most local level that makes its way up to the state party level, but it really doesn’t have a lot of bearing on the actual primary.”
The primary will happen while Ole Miss is on spring break, which begins March 7, meaning that students who are not staying on campus that week or who live out of state will be unable to vote in person in the Mississippi primary. College Democrats President Katie Davis said that this has caused the club to promote absentee ballots, so students who are registered in Mississippi can vote even if they go home for break, since Mississippi does not have early voting.
“We’re thinking most (students) won’t be here in Oxford, so if your registration has changed (to vote in Mississippi), it would be easier if you’re gone, so you can vote at home,” Davis said.
The Lafayette County Circuit Clerk’s office, which collects absentee ballots, expects an influx of them for this primary due to spring break. The office has already collected 60 ballots and expects between 400 – 500. In addition to absentee ballots, College Democrats will be providing rides to polling places for students on campus during break.
After Iowa and New Hampshire, Pete Buttigieg narrowly leads Bernie Sanders with 22 delegates to 21. Ole Miss political science professor and expert on the American presidency Jonathan Klingler said that this opens the door for a candidate not even currently in the top five.
“The Iowa caucus may have an indirect effect on the primary in Mississippi by preventing the emergence of a (clear) frontrunner before March 10, which helps create an opening for Mike Bloomberg,” Klingler said. “Bloomberg increased his spending dramatically after Iowa, and that has likely led him to increase his presence in Mississippi.”
Bloomberg, the billionaire media mogul and former mayor of New York, recently opened a campaign office in Oxford. It is one of three in Mississippi, with Gulfport and Jackson offices opening last week.
Klingler stressed that even if Bloomberg or another candidate is not the frontrunner by March 10, that most likely will not affect the way Mississippi votes.
“A recent study of primary voter’s preferences found that voters do not tend to change their preferred candidates to favor candidates who win,” Klingler said. “If later states tend to favor the frontrunner, it appears to be because other candidates have dropped out by that point.”
Andrew Yang, who dropped out of the race following a poor showing in the first two primaries, qualified to appear on the ballot in Mississippi. Other primary candidates who qualified in Mississippi may not still be running by the time voters head to the polls. Hemmins argued that supporters of Yang should cast their votes for another candidate.
“He’s not running anymore, so I guess you could see it as a protest vote.” Hemmins said. “But, it’s certainly not going to have any bearing on who moves forward. So, it is like throwing your vote away.”
Besides the Democratic presidential primary, Lafayette County voters have other major races on the docket. In the relatively uncontested Republican presidential primary, President Trump’s biggest challenger is former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld. Perennial candidate Rocky De La Fuente is also seeking the Republican nomination.
In addition to the presidential primaries, there are also primaries for U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. Democrats will select a candidate to face incumbent Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith. The most high-profile primary candidate is Mike Espy, the former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture who lost to Hyde-Smith in the 2018 Senate special election.
Ole Miss law professor Antonia Eliason is the only declared candidate in the Democratic primary for U.S. House District 1. That District covers Lafayette County and the rest of northeastern Mississippi. Eliason will take on incumbent Republican Trent Kelly in the general election.
Hemmins criticized Mississippi’s use of the “open primary” system, in which voters can participate in either party’s primary, since the state does not recognize party affiliation in the voter rolls. 15 other states have outright open primaries, while 20 have limited open primary elections.
In the 2015 Democratic primary for governor, Robert Gray, a truck driver, defeated two women, Valerie Short, a physician, and Vicki Slater, an attorney. Hemmins believes that the open primary could have allowed uninformed voters and Republicans to support Gray, a black man who she felt ran a lesser campaign, because his name tricked voters into thinking he is a white man.
“(The open primary) definitely causes problems,” Hemmins said. “We had two women on the Democratic ticket who had worked hard on campaigning, and then the Democratic nominee for governor was someone whose mother didn’t even know that he was running for governor, because he had done nothing (in his campaign). (The voters) just picked someone who sounded like a white man – Robert Gray.”
The Democratic presidential primary has not been free of issues so far. In the Iowa caucus, the application chosen by the state Democratic party to report the votes did not work properly, delaying the results for days and prompting calls for a recanvassing of the questionable vote counts. Hemmins downplayed the issue as a reporting mishap and cited reports of Republicans calling phone lines repeatedly that were supposed to be used as a backup measure when the app failed.
“It was just the reporting mechanism that broke down,” she said. “What’s sad is that it made the whole thing look like a cluster. When the app didn’t work and everyone was trying to phone in, Republicans from all over the country were just anarchists trying to jam the phone lines when people (from precincts) were trying to call in to report their data.”
Hemmins remains optimistic that the data was largely unaffected and stressed that a similar issue will not happen in Mississippi because it does not use an official caucus vote.
“The data, by and large, was good that they collected,” Hemmins said. “But, I hope folks realize that what happened there is completely different from our caucuses and our primary.
Mississippi primaries have not been without problems. In the 2019 Republican primary for governor, a polling machine malfunction at the Oasis Church polling location was changing a voter’s selection from candidate Bill Waller to now-Governor Tate Reeves.
Lafayette County Circuit Clerk Jeff Busby, who took office in January, will be overseeing his first election in the March primary. He said that the machine malfunction was merely a calibration issue and no incorrect votes were cast. When the voter reported the machine error, it was immediately taken out of service.
“The machine prints out your ballot at the end and says, ‘Is this who you wanted to vote for, yes or no? or disregard the ballot.’” Busby said. “No one just cast a vote for Mr. Reeves that did not want to.”
After previous Circuit Clerk Baretta Mosley served 22 years, Busby said he feels a heightened sense of responsibility to make sure the primaries go as planned in March.
“There’s a little bit of excitement, and a little bit of nervousness,” Busby said. “You don’t want anything to go wrong; you want things to go smooth, but no matter how hard you try, there’s always small problems. But you hope they don’t disrupt the voting process.”